sophmattcostarica

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Uvita - SJO - MAD - LHR

The last few days we spent chilling around the pool, enjoying the villa, the animals that came to visit and the incredible scenery.

On our final day in Costa Rica we went to the national park in Uvita known as the Whales Tail. On arriving in the park we were followed instantly by a friendly street dog. For the entire 3 hours we were there she had decided we would be her new owners. Whether that was walking along the beach or swimming in the sea, she was right by our side. Initially we were both a bit dubious about rabies/fleas/etc etc but after a while we enjoyed her company and the beautiful beach.

Alas, all good things must come to an end and our monumental 30 hour journey home was upon us.

We’ve had an amazing time, would definitely recommend this beautiful country.

Thanks for following along ❤️

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Marino Ballena National Park

AKA The Whale’s Tail 🐋

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Some visitors around the villa

Including the worlds most deadly caterpillar 😳

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Uvita by night

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Uvita by day

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San Jose - Uvita

First job for the day was to pick up our rental car from the airport, we managed to navigate being fleeced by the Europcar representative then set off in our 4x4 to Uvita the location of our last hotel.

We set off down the pacific coast with Matt adapting to the Tico style of driving with a few undertakes and triple overtakes here and there. Also there is a bit of a thing here of locals walking down the middle of the motorways.

We took a couple of stops en route, the last one at Dominical where a festival was taking place with marching bands along the beach. The final leg of the journey was up to the mountain to the hotel, we had heard on the reviews that this was a little bit challenging but we thought nothing of it. Maybe we should have done as the journey up the mountain was incredibly steep on a dirt track crossing tiny bridges over ravines. This would have been impossible without a 4x4.

We were greeted by a free upgrade to the premium sunset villa which was truly magnificent. We both felt very lucky.

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Puerto Viejo De Talamanca - San Jose

Today was our last day with the G Adventures group and we spent the morning strolling around town. We found an amazing little cafe called ‘Bread and Chocolate’ which as the name suggests served a great range of chocolate and bread based dishes. We both went for the Jerk BBQ sandwich and then picked up some homemade truffles and brownies to take on the coach back to San Jose.

The coach left at around midday with the journey expecting to take 5 hours, however unbeknownst to us we were in for a wild ride. About 4 hours into the journey the heavens opened and and a violent storm started with extreme rain, thunder and lightning. San Jose is surrounded by mountains and when this started we were on the main highway over the tallest mountain range, within 15 mins or so water began to gush off the mountains onto the roads followed by landslides. One major landslide in front of us completely blocked the road and our quick thinking driver turned around and headed back the way we came. What we didn’t know was another landslide had happened behind us nearly penning us in but luckily there was just enough room to get past. Once we got out the mountains we learned that the other highway to San Jose was blocked which meant there was only one route left.

In total our journey took us 10 hours and we arrived at the hotel at 11pm instead of the anticipated 5pm. We exhaustedly said goodbye to the group and went to bed ready for the next leg of the trip… on our own.

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Dinner in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca

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Puerto Viejo de Talamanca

Today we explored Caribbean paradise on a beach hopping bike tour down the coast towards the Panama boarder. The tour was led by Woody and en route we sampled local food from street vendors including lychees, cacao nibs, sour apples, mango, Jamaican patties and hibiscus and ginger juice from little bags. We spotted green macaws who are critically endangered with only 1000 left in the world. We finished the tour by taking a dip in the sea and chilling on the beach. In the evening we kicked back and had some drinks and foods with the group at a lovely restaurant.

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Tortuguero - Puerto Viejo de Talamanca

To leave Tortuguero we had to go back the way we’d came, through the dangerously shallow canal. The captain had a permanently worried look on his face the entire two hour, swelteringly hot journey. He only managed to destroy two propellors en route. Once we reached dry land we hopped on our next bus and drove down the Caribbean coast. When we got to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca we grabbed some food and went to a Reggae club to watch some live music.

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Tortuguero

We took a boat tour round the national park with a local guide called Dino. We marvelled at the spectacular scenery and completed seeing all four Costa Rican monkey species! We spotted a troop of spider monkeys (we had previously seen capuchins, squirrels and howlers) and of course lots of beautiful birds.

We spent the rest of the day chilling at the pool as this was the only place to get away from the intense heat and humidity. Then in the evening we met up with our guide Dino to hike to the sea turtle nesting grounds after sunset.

This was a completely surreal experience as we sat on the beach in the pitch black with no torches and dark clothing waiting for the turtles to come out of the sea onto the beach to lay their eggs. Each turtle that arrives at Tortugeuro beach lays roughly 100 eggs, ten times, totalling 1000 over the season. Of those 1000 eggs only 1% go on to survive. As it’s currently the start of the short laying season we were extremely privileged to witness an Atlantic Green Sea Turtle over 4 foot long lay its eggs. An unreal experience!

We weren’t allowed to take photos as the lights disturbs the laying but it’s something we will remember forever (we’ve included a stock photo to give an idea of what it was like).

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Roaming around Tortuguero

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Sarapiquí Rainforest - Tortuguero

Woken up again early by the howler monkeys we said goodbye to our tent and set off to Tortuguero on the Caribbean Coast near the border of Nicaragua.

The journey was epic as the only way in is via boats through shallow canals. We boarded a long shallow boat with all our bags and pushed off into the canal system. Due to a recent dry period the canals were particularly shallow, only a few centimetres at some points. This meant we got stuck on numerous occasions and the driver had to jump out to push us over sand banks and logs.

The turbulent journey was well worth it as we arrived to a welcome drink at our hotel, situated on the bank of the main canal, a short boat ride from the Caribbean Sea. The hotel was beautiful with the only issue being the lack of air con that made our room 30+ degrees.

That evening we took a water taxi across the water to Tortuguero town where we experienced a whole different vibe to what we had seen so far.

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Sarapiquí Rainforest

We both managed to get through the night in our tent without being taken out by a jaguar, snake or bullet ant and were woken up at 5am by a troop of howler monkeys.

Our morning activity was a bird hike where we spotted all three of the Costa Rican toucan species and various other tropical birds.

Matt and the other lads in the group played a 3 v 3 footy game, Team England / Puerto Rico v USA/ Canada with coconuts for goal posts. As expected England came out easy winners.

The rest of the day was spent enjoying the rainforest location, with an empanada making cooking class and s’mores by the campfire in the evening.

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The jungle lodge and its residents

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La fortuna - Sarapiquí Rainforest

Today we left La Fortuna and jumped on the bus to a local cooperative coffee plantation.

We took a tour and learnt about how the coffee was harvested and processed, it was interesting to discover that there are three grades of coffee 1st, 2nd and 3rd class. This definitely will change the way we buy coffee in the future as we found out that Starbucks uses the worst 3rd grade coffee and McDonald's actually uses 2nd grade! At the end of the tour we sampled the best 1st grade Costa Rican coffee which geared us up for the final leg of our journey to our camping spot in the Sarapiquí Rainforest.

This was an amazing place to stay where you felt completely immersed in nature with toucans and howler monkeys on your doorstep, literally. Sophie also broke the ‘no stroking animals to avoid rabies’ rule when she met the resident boxer, then Matt did the same with a newly born kitten. We were fascinated by the over 5 million resident leafcutter ants working hard 24/7 all around the lodge and the subsequent lack of leaves on lots of the trees!

The day was finished off with a night tour of the forest where we spotted some really diverse and vibrant wildlife including the famous Costa Rican red-eyed tree frog.

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Smoking cocktails